3 ms·

What does this add to pandoc? In other words, why would I pay for this service? It obviously runs in the cloud, but I haven't found much else. In fact, my obse

by pestaa 14y ago

What does this add to pandoc? In other words, why would I pay for this service? It obviously runs in the cloud, but I haven't found much else. In fact, my observation is that the API documentation was merely copy-pasted from the original. Example: Pandoc docs[1]: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/144454/hn/from.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/144454/hn/from.png Docverter API[2]: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/144454/hn/to.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/144454/hn/to.png [1] http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#header-identifiers-in-html-latex-and-context http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#header-identifi... [2] http://www.docverter.com/api.html#toc_425 http://www.docverter.com/api.html#toc_425 However the author went the extra mile to rename sections thus making it sound like the Markdown extensions are in fact Docverter's. Sorry to be so negative, but this almost seems like acting in bad faith and selling a GPL-licensed software as service under a new name.

zrail 14y ago
You're right, I went through and renamed some sections. I did that to reduce confusion, because there are a bunch of parts where the pandoc docs talk about things that don't make sense when you're POSTing instead of using command line options. I did give attribution at the bottom in the Authors section. You'd generally pay for a service like this if you're running on Heroku or another PaaS and don't want to have to deal with getting Pandoc and various other supporting tools up and running.
alexchamberlain 14y ago
Whilst I agree that people should be open about the software they run, let us remember that selling access to GPL software running on your machine is perfectly legal.
- rodw 14y ago
  Also, for what it's worth the author was very open and explicit about the provenance. In the footer: "This is a copy of the Pandoc README file, modified to suit Docverter's manifest format." I'm confused though. In another comment [1] zrail says this (the HTML-to-PDF in particular) is built on a Java library. Is Flying Saucer based on Pandoc? Do you use one sometimes and the other other times? [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4645497 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4645497
  - zrail 14y ago
    Docverter is a collection of a few pieces of software that get used at various times. For example, if you do markdown to docx you'll just be using Pandoc. If you convert to PDF you'll be going through flying saucer. If you go markdown to PDF you'll go through both. MOBI conversions go through Pandoc to get an ePub and then through Calibre to get the mobi. The point is that you don't have to worry about those pieces, though, since Docverter abstracts over them with a simple API.
lentil 14y ago
I don't think it's bad faith at all. They're up front about what tools the system is built on. It's more about whether it makes the most sense for you to build and host something like this yourself, or pay for what you use on a service that someone else runs for you. There are pros and cons to each, of course, but I think there are a lot of situations where the latter is going to be better. One example being: if I was building a new product and wanted to add some reporting/exporting features, I would much rather use a service like this. Document conversion is just infrastructure for those features, and so any time I spend setting up my own system for that is potentially wasted time until I can prove that the features are a success.
samstokes 14y ago
If the author is conversant in Haskell (or willing to become so), an interesting way to add value would be to support and document the various output formats, and add new output formats. Pandoc's an awesome conversion tool, but because of its many supported output formats, some are more reliable than others. For example, it can actually output an HTML/JS-based slide deck - using any of four different JS slideshow libraries - but in my experience only one of them is actually usable, and it's not clear how to customise/style the output. Of course fixing that as a developer is a simple matter of reading docs / code, but if this product is aiming to be "Pandoc for non-developers", that would be an interesting angle.

by pestaa 14y ago

zrail 14y ago

You're right, I went through and renamed some sections. I did that to reduce confusion, because there are a bunch of parts where the pandoc docs talk about things that don't make sense when you're POSTing instead of using command line options. I did give attribution at the bottom in the Authors section. You'd generally pay for a service like this if you're running on Heroku or another PaaS and don't want to have to deal with getting Pandoc and various other supporting tools up and running.

alexchamberlain 14y ago

Whilst I agree that people should be open about the software they run, let us remember that selling access to GPL software running on your machine is perfectly legal.

rodw 14y ago
Also, for what it's worth the author was very open and explicit about the provenance. In the footer: "This is a copy of the Pandoc README file, modified to suit Docverter's manifest format." I'm confused though. In another comment [1] zrail says this (the HTML-to-PDF in particular) is built on a Java library. Is Flying Saucer based on Pandoc? Do you use one sometimes and the other other times? [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4645497 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4645497
- zrail 14y ago
  Docverter is a collection of a few pieces of software that get used at various times. For example, if you do markdown to docx you'll just be using Pandoc. If you convert to PDF you'll be going through flying saucer. If you go markdown to PDF you'll go through both. MOBI conversions go through Pandoc to get an ePub and then through Calibre to get the mobi. The point is that you don't have to worry about those pieces, though, since Docverter abstracts over them with a simple API.

lentil 14y ago

I don't think it's bad faith at all. They're up front about what tools the system is built on. It's more about whether it makes the most sense for you to build and host something like this yourself, or pay for what you use on a service that someone else runs for you. There are pros and cons to each, of course, but I think there are a lot of situations where the latter is going to be better. One example being: if I was building a new product and wanted to add some reporting/exporting features, I would much rather use a service like this. Document conversion is just infrastructure for those features, and so any time I spend setting up my own system for that is potentially wasted time until I can prove that the features are a success.

samstokes 14y ago

If the author is conversant in Haskell (or willing to become so), an interesting way to add value would be to support and document the various output formats, and add new output formats. Pandoc's an awesome conversion tool, but because of its many supported output formats, some are more reliable than others. For example, it can actually output an HTML/JS-based slide deck - using any of four different JS slideshow libraries - but in my experience only one of them is actually usable, and it's not clear how to customise/style the output. Of course fixing that as a developer is a simple matter of reading docs / code, but if this product is aiming to be "Pandoc for non-developers", that would be an interesting angle.